New Zealand: Lake Kaniere

All right, if I’m going to mention Lake Kaniere, as I did last time, I guess I should show you what it looks like. The view of it above is from February 19th.

But I really prefer Lake Wakatipu, which I photographed two days later under similarly overcast skies but with ultramarine and more animated and therefore more photogenic water. And oh, the patterned rocks along parts of Lake Wakatipu’s shore:

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

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The Dead River

We’re not done with pictures from southwest Missouri, and I’ve already gone out photographing five times since my return to Austin, but let’s take a first look at the vegetation in northeastern Illinois. In particular, here are two scenes from along a trail in Illinois Beach State Park in Zion, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Our guide on June 6 was Melissa of Melissa Blue Fine Art, who draws inspiration for some of her paintings from the scenery and flora in Lake County, Illinois. Of the first image, which shows the Dead River, she later wrote that the plants include “yellow water lily, chairmaker’s rush and Anemone canadensis. We call the lily spatterdock here, Nuphar luteum. The rush is Scirpus americanus. Every year the river looks a little bit different, with different plants abundant some years and absent others. These 3 are always present, though.” For more on the sometimes deadly Dead River, you can read a brief but interesting article.

The second photograph, taken from a boardwalk, shows the fluffy seed heads of Eriophorum angustifolium, called cotton grass even though it’s a sedge and not a grass.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

My tribute to a tributary of Bull Creek

 

Here’s a downstream view from April 21st of Great Hills Park’s main creek, a tributary of Bull Creek. At the far left is the rocky outcrop that you saw from the other side on April Fool’s Day in a view that lent itself to pareidolia.

If you can imagine turning around and walking upstream a hundred feet or so (30m) from where I stood, and then looking over at the cliff there, you’d see this panel of stony wall adorned with pale green lichen. I don’t know what caused the darker vertical streaks but I like the effect they created.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

The results of rain

Some of you have heard that Texas got a lot of rain this past Friday. It’s true. In my northwest part of Austin we got probably 5 inches of the stuff, and at around 3:30 A.M. Saturday the sound of another downpour briefly woke me from sleep. By the time morning came I figured I’d better go out and see what all that water had done, so I spent some time over at a heavily flowing Bull Creek. In particular, I worked my way down to the base of the largest waterfall in one of its tributaries, which you see here.

If the scene looks familiar, it’s because I showed a view of this waterfall after a similarly heavy deluge 13 months ago. That time I gave you the cottony water that comes from a long exposure, but this time you have a take that’s more the way our eyes see things. That view was unimpeded, while this one has the overlay of a leaning tree. Different times, different approaches.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman